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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

I used to believe that there was very little difference between the Religious Zionist / Modern Orthodox world and the Charedi world. I used to believe that all Orthodox Jews were in agreement on almost all major theological issues (Truth of the Torah, Obligation to Keep Halacha, etc), the differences were only on smaller (but still significant) issues which tend to be exaggerated, particularly Zionism and approach Secular Education.

Over recent years I have come to realize that the gulf between Charedi Judaism and religious Zionism / Modern Orthodox / Centrist Judaism is far deeper than the question of whether you say Halel on Yom Ha'atzmaut.

This point was hammered home by an article in Forward "Gentiles at the Gates". I cannot understand what the author was trying to say. She tells a story about a friend who had a daughter that was taught in school that Only Jews have suffered Genocide. This is a silly statement for anyone to make, especially a school teacher, especially when anyone with even a minimal knowledge of current events or world history would know that it is false.

Sure enough, the daughter Googled "Genocide" and discovered that she had been lied to in school and there were many other examples of genocide.

What happened was this: Chani, Miriam’s 16-year-old daughter, was
writing a report on the Holocaust, and Miriam, putting the little ones
to sleep, gave Chani permission to search online. The teenager typed in
the word “genocide,” and there in front of her eyes was a Wikipedia
entry with phrases like “Rwandan genocide,” and “Armenian genocide.” So
Chani, knowing there’d been only one genocide, the Holocaust, Googled
the word again, and a few frustrated clicks later she found that the
Internet’s mistake was even greater than she realized; now there was
something called the Sudanese genocide, too. And when she clicked on it,
photos appeared, taken days earlier, that showed Sudan’s genocide up
close. Up very close.

This is a classic example of a "teachable moment". The mother or teacher could have sat down with the girl and discussed how Judaism approaches the concept of Evil in the World. They could discuss the difference between the Holocaust and other types of Genocide, they could explore ways that we as Jews and as Human Beings can try to make this world a better place.

Instead of seizing the educational opportunity, the family threw out the computer and tried to restore a state of ignorance.

Miriam immediately shut off the computer, but Chani had gone into
shock. When Miriam wasn’t looking, she searched obsessively for the
genocides of the past century: Sudan, Rwanda, Armenia, Serbia, Cambodia,
Pakistan, Guinea. Miriam realized this only two weeks later, when she
checked the browser history. But by then Chani had questions, questions
about God, misery and the stunning discovery that Jews, after all, held
no monopoly on suffering.
It was a betrayal devastating to her faith. Up until
that evening, Chani had known with certainty that only Jews really
suffered, because we are the chosen people. The rest of the jealous
planet, therefore, wanted to destroy us because they hated our morality.

...

It was a traumatizing ordeal for a devout Jewish
mother, watching the daughter she’d lovingly raised to care only for her
own show the same compassion for others.
Eventually Miriam had had enough. She wanted her
daughter back. She wanted the pious Chani who cared deeply but for the
right folks, who had a generous heart but clear priorities. She wanted
the girl for whom the world ended where her knowledge did, and who did
not care about what she was not supposed to know. The computer had done a
terrible thing: It had allowed her child to encounter humanity up
close, eye to suffering eye, and in the deceiving light of that reality,
it was impossible to properly tell the superior from the inferior.
Agony looked the same everywhere.
Miriam tried explaining it. It wasn’t that others
didn’t suffer, she said, but that we suffered more, and for better
reasons. They because of sin, we because we were chosen.
So Miriam threw out the computer, as her rav
advised her to do. Though a return to ignorance was difficult, he
explained, nothing was impossible. The gates of repentance were always
open, and with time, they hoped, her daughter would forget about a
country called Sudan and its suffering.

The Rav's advise - instead of learning about the world and appreciating G-d's role in it, maybe we should move back into a world of ignorance and darkness.

It is no wonder that the daughter abandoned her parent's lifestyle. How could anyone stay with a belief system that answers questions by trying to shut out reality.